1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to rolling mills in which bars, rods and other like long products are continuously hot rolled in the roll passes of multi-groove rolls, and is concerned in particular with an improvement in the alignment of the grooves of individual roll passes with each other, as well as the alignment of roll passes with the mill passline (for vertical stands) and with the mill center line for (horizontal stands).
2. Description of the Prior Art
In conventional bar and rod rolling mills, the grooves of the work rolls are for the most part manually aligned with each other and with the mill passline or center line. This is a time consuming task, often requiring repetitive trial runs before satisfactory alignment is achieved. Accuracy depends largely on the "eye and feel" of the mill operator. Setup inconsistencies from operator to operator are inevitable. All of this impacts negatively on production efficiency.
The object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for automatically achieving precise, rapid and repeatable groove settings and roll pass alignments.